The discovery of this bubble, which did not last more than a few hours, provides information regarding the behavior of black holes. What increases the mystery of these astronomical objects is that they are not visible in every sense of the word, as the force of their gravity prevents even light from escaping from them.
The giant black hole “Sagittarius A” located in the center of the Milky Way is regarding 27,000 light-years away from the planet, and it was discovered thanks to the movement of stars that revolve around it. Last May, the IHT International Network of Radio Astronomy Observatories published the first image of the ring of matter that resonates with the black hole before being sucked into it.
The ALMA telescope, one of these observatories located in Chile, detected a “very surprising” signal in the Sagittarius A observation data, astrophysicist Masek Wilgus of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy told AFP.
A few minutes before ALMA captured this data, the Chandra Space Telescope detected a “massive emission” of X-rays from Sagittarius A, Wilgus explains.
This burst of energy, thought to be similar to solar storms emanating from the sun, emitted a bubble of gas that passed around the black hole at full speed, according to the study published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
The phenomenon, which lasted regarding an hour and a half, made it possible to perform calculations that showed that the gas bubble revolved a complete revolution around the black hole in just 70 minutes, and thus at a speed equivalent to 30 percent of the speed of light, which reaches 300,000 kilometers per second, which is an “extraordinary” speed. According to Masek Wilgus.
It is likely that the phenomenon has a magnetic origin, according to the theory explained by the scientist. The black hole’s magnetic field is so strong that it prevents the absorption of a portion of the matter orbiting around it.
However, this accumulation of matter leads to a “burst of flux” that penetrates the magnetic field and releases a burst of energy, in the form of a bubble of gas, according to the astrophysicist.
It is expected that observing these magnetic fields will help in understanding how black holes work, and in showing how quickly these black holes rotate on themselves.